


Detour

by Eldritch



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Riordan, Vagrant Story
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-05
Updated: 2009-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-02 14:59:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eldritch/pseuds/Eldritch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The shadows take Nico somewhere altogether... unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detour

It was hardly the first time that shadow traveling had left Nico somewhere totally different than where he'd intended. The first incident with China had been embarrassing. The second and third were just annoying. But this was different. From the moment he picked himself up from the shadowy alleyway where he'd landed, glancing around furtively in case anyone had seen his less-than-dignified arrival, that much was obvious.

For a brief, confusing second, he thought he was back in the Underworld. The scent of earth and decay was cloyingly thick around him. But the style of ruined buildings was all wrong, and he'd never seen anything like the soft, blue light flickering in the old-fashioned lamps.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto," Nico muttered. He had a vague sense that maybe he should have saved that line for a time when Mrs. O'Leary was with him, but he banished that thought quickly. There were more important things to think about. Like the faint scraping sound behind him. The hair on the back of Nico's neck stood up and he automatically reached for his sword.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that it was only a skeleton, dressed in the rusting remnants of what might have been chain mail and clutching a dented mace. At the sight of the Stygian Iron blade in Nico's hand, it hesitated.

"I have use for you," Nico said, threading command into his voice. His shoulders trembled slightly with the effort of using his powers so soon after shadow travel, but he swallowed his exhaustion the best he could. He began to force his will upon the skeleton, to see who commanded it and what purpose it served--

\--and nearly lost his footing as he started in surprise. The skeleton wasn't the mindless puppet he'd assumed it was. There was a consciousness buried inside it, as bare and rotted as the thing's physical form, but still present. It was different than the undead warriors Nico was used to summoning for himself. Fascinated, he probed deeper.

_hungry we hunger our bodies our flesh give them back so hungry please_

This time he did fall backwards, as a blast of crazed _want_ hit him with all the cold force of an unhappy Hyperborean giant. The corner of one of the crumbling cobblestones stabbed into his back when he landed. Nico hissed in pain, his sword falling from his hand and clattering on the stone. For a long moment, he just lay there, his head pounding from the combined shocks of the fall and what he'd felt from the skeleton. Which was now scattered in pieces of bone all over the street thanks to Nico's own automatic, retaliatory blast of power.

But even as dazed and exhausted as he was, he couldn't miss it when a feeling of power suddenly suffused the room. it was familiar and foreign all at once, calling to something deep in his bones and tugging. Nico had felt that sensation before, when his father used his power, but this was different. Similar, but different, like well-known passage from a book that been run through a translator a few times and come out with the same building blocks, but assembled in a strange, new way.

He scrambled into a loose crouch just as the ghost materialized in front of him. It was a pale, sickly little boy, dressed in stiff, formal clothes-- no. That wasn't right. Nico narrowed his eyes. The ghost blurred and reformed, this time as a too-lean young man, beautiful in the same wickedly dangerous manner as the sharp blades where his fingers should have been.

"You're a long way from home, little godling," the ghost murmured, sounding almost amused.

Nico had to agree with him on that.


End file.
